What were the Middle Ages? The conventional answer is that they were the centuries between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginnings of modern European civilization. Scholars have argued, and will argue endlessly, as to the exact dates of these two terminal points, but we do not have to wait for them to reach an agreement. Most historians would admit that the Roman Empire was well on its way to decline by the fifth century and that many of the characteristic elements of modern civilization were apparent by 1500. We do not have to be more precise than this—we can say that the Middle Ages run, roughly, from the fifth to the fifteenth century. There will be exceptions to this rule-of-thumb definition—aspects of Roman civilization survive in some parts of Europe long after 400 A.D. and elements of modern civilization appear in Italy well before 1500—but no student of medieval history can say that these transitional forms are completely outside his field of interest.
The Middle Ages extend from the fifth to the fifteenth century. This is a long period, so long that many writers will argue that it has no real unity, that there are many middle ages instead of one. There is force in this argument. We have only to think what our ancestors were like a thousand or even five hundred years ago to wonder whether one of Clovis's German warriors had much in common with a crusader of the twelfth century or an English baron of the Wars of the Roses. Is there any real unity in the Middle Ages, or have we simply developed a convenient catch-basket phrase in which to dump a number of centuries that do not greatly interest us?
To answer this question let us pick a century which everyone will admit was medieval, say the twelfth. How do the ways of
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